we walked up to school although we knew the school
was closed, a day of sledging on baking trays,
and Spike the Snowman with his dog, Snowy.
The butcher crunched with us the short cut
late and later for work through the little park
and got trapped by his childhood -

    from 'That was the day it snowed'

The Last Place on Earth is a warm, witty celebration of the textures of a life. The vanishing world of a working-class childhood is evoked alongside football in the park and the purposeful calm of ironing; family parties and born-again bikers, jokes about fruit and the silent beauty of Sheffield on a summer night, its shops lit up like deserted cruise ships. Peter Sansom has an eye for what is distinctive in the mundane, an understanding of the power of half-submerged memories to bind us to people and places. Above all, his poems honour the quiet pleasures that give meaning to life, affirming the depths of ordinary happiness.